ob_start

Description

This function will turn output buffering on. While output buffering is active no output is sent from the script (other than headers), instead the output is stored in an internal buffer.

The contents of this internal buffer may be copied into a string variable using ob_get_contents(). To output what is stored in the internal buffer, use ob_end_flush(). Alternatively, ob_end_clean() will silently discard the buffer contents.

Warning

Some web servers (e.g. Apache) change the working directory of a script when calling the callback function. You can change it back by e.g. chdir(dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'])) in the callback function.

Output buffers are stackable, that is, you may call ob_start() while another ob_start() is active. Just make sure that you call ob_end_flush() the appropriate number of times. If multiple output callback functions are active, output is being filtered sequentially through each of them in nesting order.

Parameters

output_callback

An optional output_callback function may be specified. This function takes a string as a parameter and should return a string. The function will be called when the output buffer is flushed (sent) or cleaned (with ob_flush(), ob_clean() or similar function) or when the output buffer is flushed to the browser at the end of the request. When output_callback is called, it will receive the contents of the output buffer as its parameter and is expected to return a new output buffer as a result, which will be sent to the browser. If the output_callback is not a callable function, this function will return FALSE.

If the callback function has two parameters, the second parameter is filled with a bit-field consisting of PHP_OUTPUT_HANDLER_START, PHP_OUTPUT_HANDLER_CONT and PHP_OUTPUT_HANDLER_END.

If output_callback returns FALSE original input is sent to the browser.

The output_callback parameter may be bypassed by passing a NULL value.

ob_end_clean(), ob_end_flush(), ob_clean(), ob_flush() and ob_start() may not be called from a callback function. If you call them from callback function, the behavior is undefined. If you would like to delete the contents of a buffer, return "" (a null string) from callback function. You can't even call functions using the output buffering functions like print_r($expression, true) or highlight_file($filename, true) from a callback function.

Note:

In PHP 4.0.4, ob_gzhandler() was introduced to facilitate sending gz-encoded data to web browsers that support compressed web pages. ob_gzhandler() determines what type of content encoding the browser will accept and will return its output accordingly.

chunk_size

If the optional parameter chunk_size is passed, the buffer will be flushed after any output call which causes the buffer's length to equal or exceed chunk_size. The default value 0 means that the output function will only be called when the output buffer is closed.

Prior to PHP 5.4.0, the value 1 was a special case value that set the chunk size to 4096 bytes.

erase

If the optional parameter erase is set to FALSE, the buffer will not be deleted until the script finishes. This causes that flushing and cleaning functions would issue a notice and return FALSE if called.

Return Values

Returns TRUE on success or FALSE on failure.

Changelog

Version

Description

5.4.0

A chunk size of 1 now results in chunks of 1 byte being sent to the output buffer.

4.3.2

This function was changed to return FALSE in case the passed output_callback can not be executed.